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A lot of people have attacked the fictional character Christian Grey for being a bad dom. Of course, he’d be a terrible dom if he was real. He stalks lip-biting inner-goddess Anastasia, spanks her and takes a strap to her arse, all without her consent.

I’m sure he behaved badly in the second two books as well, but I haven’t been able to read them. Call me a snob and call me a cab, but after skimming Volume One I was out of there.

If Christian Grey were a real person bdsm communities would have warnings about him, for his weird, unethical and non-consensual behaviour. He’d finish up getting charged with assault and being in the centre of a massive media scandal: “Billionaire in kinky love-nest rape!” That sort of thing.

However, as a fictional character his behaviour is a lot better. He’s made a lot more women come, with Fifty Shades in one hand and their bits in the other, than any thousand real doms combined. Even if you include me. That’s a significant contribution to human happiness, and you can’t ignore it.

As a fictional character, my main criticism of Christian Grey is that he doesn’t do nearly enough spanking and commanding and binding the Anastasia of Steel. I skimmed Fifty Shades Freed looking for the bdsm scenes so I could critique them, but I never found any. I’m sure I just didn’t look hard enough.

In the interminable schoolgirl spanking saga I’m writing, there are two headmasters, and they initiate certain of their students into various kinky sexual practises. Obviously, if they were real and lived in our world, they’d both belong in jail.

They’re not breaking age-of-consent laws, and the age gap between them and their charges isn’t all that great: about eight years.

But they’re in a position of authority and there’s no question at all that they’re misusing their authority in ways that, uh, conflict with the criminal code in any civilised society.

On the other hand, these two imaginary men are written to give pleasure to their readers, and my impression is that my spanking headmasters, like the “naughty schoolgirl” scenario itself, appeal particularly to a female audience. I am that audience’s humble servant.

There is, eventually, a happy ending to the Jennifer-and-Maddie saga, but at the rate at which time moves in my stories, that ending will probably arrive some time in 2021. In the meantime, my point is, I’m happy to write it and make it as sexy as possible. While being fervently against corporal punishment and sex between teachers and students in the real world.

I’m not saying that fictional characters have no ethical requirements at all. We erotica writers who consider ourselves to be on the side of the angels (especially the sexy, spankable, fuckable angels) don’t write bestiality, or eroticise rape, or write scenarios involving people under eighteen, though the age of consent where I live is sixteen.

But still, there is a difference, a space, between fantasy and real life, and it’s a space that erotica writers spend a lot of time in. It’s fluid and it’s complex, like the best sex, and we need to defend our freedom to have erotic fantasies that are perfectly sexy without necessarily being perfectly ethical.

We know the difference between fiction and fantasy, on the one hand, and the real world, in the other.

We need to take action in the real world to challenge the beliefs and indulgences that make it far too easy for men to rape and get away with it, and to give support to organisations that support women who’ve been subjected to rape and other violence.

At the same time, we need to defend our right to have erotic fantasies, and to share them with others.

Erotica is a powerful tool for improving human happiness, and for helping people to find and explore their own erotic selves without censorship or condemnation.

Freddie Underwood is a New York-based public relations writer and event organizer. He’s at a conference in Glasgow, after which he plans to meet his lover Sharzad Malouf in Rome. He meets Daphne Rintoull, an artist who’s been dumped by her lover, and beds him on the rebound. So he has two women in his life.

The story follows his relationship with Shar from first meeting in New York, their time together in French Guyana, to Rome. He helps her confront a teacher who put her in hospital, when she was a four-year staying in an English boarding-school because her parents had unwisely involved themselves in mid-East politics.

With Freddie’s support, she confronts the man, and is able to see him as small and fearful; a ghost is laid. She celebrates that, and Freddie saying he loves her, by walking into Trevi’s pool. She does the Anita Ekberg walk from La Dolce Vita, until she slips and falls in. Freddie performs an unnecessary rescue and realises they are similarly foolish.

They have to part when Shar has to go back to work. They are in love, though they can’t see how they can be together, in the US or her country.

Meanwhile Daphne has told a Roman gallery she has enough work for an exhibition, which is not true. She begs Freddie’s help and support. He keeps her brave while she creates the extra work needed. He writes her an exhibition category full of the most ferocious art-wank.

At the opening, he thinks she’s seducing a critic (who she’s actually trying to escape), and drags her off to have jealous sex with her in a broom closet. They disturb a tin of paint thinner stored above them, and fall out in front of the Minister for the Arts, an actual Fascist, and the media. So Daphne’s exhibition is a tremendous success, making the news and not just the arts pages.

They also part, but not before they have admitted that they love each other.

Freddie returns to New York. Both women, for different reasons, invite him to be with them in a couple of months, at a climate change conference in Wellington, New Zealand.

Freddie has to admit he’s out of competence. He no longer knows what to do.

(Is there a sequel? Of course there is.)

Potentially important aspects of my manuscript

1 It’s a funny book, with a hell of a lot of sex in it. Much of the sex is bdsm-flavored, though light and romantic, and neither scary nor impersonal.

2 It’s a rom/com set in the real world. For a book with bdsm elements, it’s refreshingly free of billionaires, werewolves and mysterious islands.

3 It’s told from a male point of view, but beta-testing drafts indicate that the text is woman-friendly.

Well, I’m a billionaire in Thai baht. I’m rising because I had a bad cold and now I seem to be getting rid of it. I’m cocky because I’ve got a cock. I am be-cocked. My cock works well, rising in the presence of submissive women who want my attention, and later it sets, like the sun.

So that’s how I got “cocky” and “billionaire” into my title. I know, though, that “billionaire” and “cocky” are two words that make me avoid a book, especially if they appear on the cover.

With “billionaire” it’s partly because it suggests the book is going to be derivative of the “Fifty Shades” books, and god knows that’s a terrible model. There’s also the way sex gets mingled with a kind of right-wing economics. No questions are asked about how the billionaire got his money, and that’s the most real human-interest part of “billionaire” to me. As well as, are they paying their share of taxes?

Instead there’s a sort of Ayn Rand approach, that the very rich have no obligations to the society they live in. They’re just desirable because they can take a girl around in their private jet or yacht, and they can take her shopping.

There’s something faintly insulting to both men and women is this sexual idolisation of the billionaire. It suggests that a man isn’t a dom because of his personal qualities, but because of his wallet. He dominates the heroine because he’s rich. Similarly, it suggests that women aren’t attracted by personality, humour, eyes, and so on, but by wallets. That’s a shallow and cynical take on human nature, and also, thank fuck, a false view. it doesn’t remotely resemble the world I live in or the dominant and submissive couples I know.

Then there’s the “cocky” thing. The attributes of the “cocky” man seem to be that he’s good-looking and really, deeply knows it. So when he does something obnoxious to the heroine at their first meeting, and she responds angrily, he knows she’s aroused by him to the point of soaking through her jeans.

So he says, “I know you want me,” to this woman he’s just met, and then, “but you’ll be begging me for it later.” And he saunters off.

A “cocky” man, encountered in real life, would be what is usually called “an asshole”.

I don’t think it’s any surprise that “Faleena Hopkins”, the woman who took out a copyright on the word “cocky”, (which she did not coin, and she was not the first to use it in an erotic romance title) and started threatening to sue other writers who use the word, reviewed Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugs” on Amazon and said it was her favourite book.

Most doms I know are trying to be decent human beings, and most submissives react to the person and not their wallet. And they struggle to work out how to be dominant and submissive together. That’s the most realistic bdsm story. It’s also, I think, the sexiest.

The previous episode ishere.Maddie and her new friend Lucy have been making out in the little room beyond the school library. And Lucy, post-orgamically, has agreed that she’ll do whatever Maddie tells her. And that Maddie should spank her if she doesn’t. So those have become the terms of their relationship.

Also, this is the 300th Wicked Wednesday prompt. And time to thank and congratulate Marie Rebelle for her running this meme! She gives a lot to the community!

Thank you, Marie!

Maddie and her girl

So I hugged my girl. Lucy: my property. It felt so beautiful: there was magic between us, and around us. She was more hesitant than me but after a pause she put her arms around me too. I realised that I had to do what Sir would do, and think about what she was feeling, and try to look after her.

I said, “Sir’s going to cane us both, after school. In three hours. Are you scared?”

Lucy nodded, looking at the floor. I said, “I’ll look after you. And he’s… Not as strict as he pretends. Oh, the cane will hurt, both of us. But he doesn’t want you to be too scared. Or for it to hurt more than you can take. If you pay attention, you’ll notice he’ll be looking after you too. He’ll make sure that you leave with a nice stripey bottom, but you’ll have reasons to smile, too.”

“I… guess. The spanking…” She stopped. She was embarrassed by what she had to say.

Then she said it. “Over his knee. When his hand was on my bare bottom, it did feel good. It was so hot. I knew I was turning him on. And he knew I was gushing. But the cane, that’s a whole different thing, isn’t it?”

“It’s more dramatic. But it can be sexy too. Once you’re rreally turned on it doesn’t feel like pain at all. Or it does, but it’s good. It feels… right.”

“Is that how it is for you? When he canes you?”

I kissed her again. I couldn’t not kiss her: she was so pretty when she blushed. And she knew it. “Yes, little lovely.” To shock her, I said, “And… he’s not the only one who’s going to cane you. I’ll be caning you too.”

Lucy looked at me, horrified. “What? This afternoon?”

Her eyes were so wide, her mouth open. I smiled and held her tighter. I kissed her again. She sighed and leaned against me.

“No, silly girl. Not tonight. Unless Sir tells me to. I belong to him, remember, so what I do or don’t do isn’t entirely up to me. But I won’t ask for permission to cane you this afternoon. Or tonight. I meant, when we’re together, and you don’t please me. I suppose I’d have to ask his permission, once you become his too. I guess we’d use his office, when I need to cane you, pretty Lucy.”

“He’d watch, wouldn’t he?” The idea didn’t seem to displease her.

“I suppose he would. You have a lovely body, my pretty girl. I don’t think he’d want to miss it.”

Lucy smiled her little secretive smile again. “This afternoon I’m going to see you naked again. You’ll be seeing all of me, for the first time.”

“I already know your body is beautiful, little Lucy.” I put my hand on her pussy, and squeezed her lips lightly, then harder. The way I’d like it.

The bell rang. I smacked her pussy. “We’ve got five minutes to get to class. He’ll hear about it, if we’re late. And…”

Lucy opened her legs, hoping I’d finger her some more. But she was being naughty and she knew it.

I raised her skirt at the back again, and for a moment admired her pinkness, from that morning’s spanking. Then I smacked her, once, hard, so she hissed her breath in. I hoped there was no one in the library yet, to hear us. I’d have to leave it at one smack.

“I can’t punish you properly for that now. But I’ll spank you properly, tonight. When we’re at his place. For that.”

Lucy squirmed against me. I so wanted her. I wanted her breasts, bare, pressed to mine. I squeezed her bottom where I’d smacked her. Then I broke the hug.

“That’s it for now, Lucy. Straight to class for you. Now!”

“Yes, Maddie.” And she tugged her skirt into place, and opened the door. She looked back at me. And smiled, a little dazed. I was dazed too. But I made myself look stern. She was due at Math. I was due at French. I left her time to clear the library and maybe twenty yards of corridor. Then I followed her.

The Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, by Captain Francis Grose.

In 1785 Captain Francis Grose published the first edition of his “Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue”. The book’s a useful collection of old, outdated slang. Gross claims he got most of the words by hanging out with soldiers.

The Dictionary is best remembered these days for Grose’s listing of “Cunt” and his definition: “a nasty word for a nasty thing”.

That looks horrifically misogynist, and it’s always quoted as an example of Grose’s, or more generally of male, misogyny.

I’ve started to wonder, though. The first issue, for me, is that the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue doesn’t really have anything else that comes close to the level of fear and hate of women, or at least their genitals, that definition seems to demonstrate. And it gives more space to thieves’ cant (language used by criminals) than to sexual words, So could Grose have been saying something else?

Nasty as she wants it to be.(Drawing: Betty Dodson)

We know the word “nasty” has a strand of sexual meanings. It’s everywhere in rap. “Do the nasty”, meaning, “have sexual intercourse”, anyone? But “nasty” has sexual meanings in blues, too. Which takes it back to the 20th century, and maybe the 19th, in US black culture.

But it’s older than that. The sexual use of “nasty” may have re-entered non-black English from its preservation among black culture. It’s not uncommon for words to survive in one cultural group while they disappear elsewhere.

So we go back in time looking for early uses, and we don’t find much, because sexual words seldom made it into print, before the 19th century.

But it turns out that “nasty” meant “lewd” from the 17th century.

Francis Grose: Geddit? Just kidding, folks!

“Lewd” means something like “overtly sexy”, with a connotation of “slightly more overtly sexual than the speaker is comfortable with.” But the sexual meaning is clear. “Lewd” is always a compliment, in my book.

So, remembering that this meaning of “nasty” was in use from the 1600’s, and that Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was published in 1785, it’s possible to see his definition in another way.

Was Grose making a sort of joke? “Cunt: a sexy name for a sexy thing”?

The story is called Desires. Gee, if you really loved me, you’d go buy the book it’s in.

You can buy ithere.It’s available in paperback and as an e-book. I recommend the paperback because you can sit it on your shelf and take it down when you need to spank someone with it, or be spanked.

Also, there are people who won’t have sex with you if there isn’t at least one book in your house. And in my experience Book Nerds Make Better Lovers.

The book is Identity, and it showcases a diverse collection of essays and stories by over twenty writers of sex fiction and non-fiction, and sex toy reviewers. It presents a range of talent from established writers and new writers, all of whom are coming to the 2017 Eroticon Conference in London.

It’s a sex-positive anthology, moving from the heteronormative to show a truly representational cross-section of erotic identity.

In this unique compilation, the central theme of identity is explored from many different angles. Some authors discuss their personal identity as writers, others how their fictional characters explore who they are through sex. Yet other writers examine the impact of the erotic identity, sexuality or personality and how this is celebrated or must remain hidden.

These are the top two shelves of the (mostly) bdsm bookcase. It starts with Taschen reprints of Eric Stanton femdom fantasies. And a shiny gold book of historical erotic photos, most of which don’t have any bdsm relevance, but it’s there to be with the rest of the Taschen books. There’s safety in numbers. As the mathematicians say.

Then Sade, Sacher-Masoch, “Walter” and his secret life (I’ve read it all, so you don’t have to: god, that man was a terrible writer), then various books of Victorian porn, and a few samples from pre-Victorian times.

The next two shelves are mostly 20th century bdsm erotica, plus two of the 50 Shades books, which I picked up off the free book exchange table at the local rail station. Plus a few non-fiction books. The wiry brass couple fucking on the upper shelf are from Mali. And the stocky fellow with a thick (but short) erection on the lower shelf is a piece of Saami art, from Lappland.

These are the two bottom shelves. On the left of the upper of these two shelves, there’s one of the very few actually valuable books or series I own. Those three volumes are the bibliographies of Henry Ashbee, possibly better known as Pisanis Fraxi. The Index Liber Prohibitorium, or Index of ForbiddenBooks, and its two successors. First editions, from Victorian times.

The very bottom shelf has various books of erotic art, including bdsm art, like the works of Guido Crepax and Milo Manara.

The thing with a Playboy Bunny Symbol is the complete set of Playboy from the 1950s, on CD-ROM. I’d get the collection for the 1960s as well, but I’ve never seen it in this format. I wouldn’t bother with the 1970s, though Robert Anton Wilson was still editing and writing there at the time. But it was an important and stylish literary mag, for a while.

The duck? He’s a reed duck decoy, First Nation art from the Canadian prairies. He’s got no business being there amongst the sex books in particular. But the duck, he just wanted to be there. Maybe he’s a mallard: they – unlike most other birds – actually have a penis.

And you need a duck, don’t you, if you want to write a rhyming poem about sex.

I was walkin’ down the road an I met a little duck.

He said, “How are ya, human, you look down on your luck?”

I said,”I saw that sexy Sally, tried to slip my nip inside her tuck;

She told me nobody loves me an I’ll never get a -” And so on.

Anyway, that’s the Concavity of Depravity, where Cinderella posed, waiting for her Prince. (Who did come.)

UPDATE:

Cinderella has naming rights, for various reasons. She tells me the whole room is the Library of Depravity, and only the sex books section is the Concavity of Depravity. That seems fine to me.

This is the sex alcove in my library. It’s been named (not by me) the Concavity of Depravity. I like it, though, so it’s become my name for the whole damn library.

Five cases of books about fucking. The case at the left, in the front, is for the pioneering sexologists: the complete works of Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, Havelock Ellis, whatever I’ve been able to get of Magnus Hirschfeld, Ivan Bloch and others. Plus Shere Hite, the legendary Juliet Richters of the Australian Survey on Health and Relationships (ASHR), and various others.

That long white object on the middle shelf of that bookcase is a whalebone dildo, which is probably Indonesian in origin, and was used for pleasure and (the head is relatively small) apparently to instruct young brides-to-be on their marital duties.

The case at the front right is devoted to less pleasant topics, like diseases, rape in the family, in the community and in prison, sexual abuse of children, and other horrible things.

The case on the inside left is for historical books – Aretino, Aristotle’s Masterpiece, the Memoirs of Casanova, and other good things. Also, sex work now and in the past. And pro-sex feminism, i.e. people like Lynn Segal.

At the back, shining in the light, is the (mostly) bdsm bookcase. We’ll come back to that, on Thursday.

And the inside right bookcase, which is barely visible, contains people writing Theory (i.e. late 20th century pomo wankery) about sex and gender. And writing by anti-sex feminists, glowering across at their pro-sex counterparts in the left book case.

An episode from the later life of O has been discovered in the pocket of an overcoat in the Department of Lost Documents. It takes place shortly before O’s notorious entry into Celebrity Rehab. The manuscript appears to be in Harold Pinter’s hand-writing.

(First Bouncer, a man in a too-tight tuxedo, stands in a doorway under a discreet sign that reads: “Sir Stephen’s: All-nite Bdsm Club”.)

First Bouncer: Quiet tonight.

(The club door opens and the Second Bouncer appears, pushing a naked woman, with “I Heart Sir Stephen” branded on her left buttock, out the door and down the steps.)

Second Bouncer: You shouldn’t be coming back, ma’am.

First Bouncer: I was saying, quiet tonight.

Second Bouncer: Mmf.

O (for the naked woman is she): Lemme back inside, you Nazi bastard!

Second Bouncer: You were bothering the proprietor, ma’am.

O: Look, all I said was, ‘Dominate me, Steve, you know, like in the old days?’ So what’s wrong with a girl asking for a bit of attention?

Second Bouncer: Sir Stephen says you’ve been stalking him.

First Bouncer: He said he can’t look out his window without you on his lawn, screaming for a flogging.

O: I belong to him! He must punish me.

First Bouncer: Rattling your pussy rings at him.

Second Bouncer: Most upsetting.

O: He put them on my body when he made me his!

First Bouncer: They’re not bloody castanets, you know.

Second Bouncer: Anyway, you were upsetting the patrons.

O: Patrons! I was upsetting his new slaveboi, more like. But, oh well… [Sighs.] You know, you’re kinda cute yourself, aren’t you? And you were pretty masterful, back there. A girl likes that.

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